Tuesday, September 03, 2019

Book 9 of 2019 -- The Gospel According to Star Wars

My daughter saw this one on a book table at Presbytery and told me I had to buy it (although she is not a Star Wars fan at all). So I did.

Like many of my generation, those of us who grew up with the original trilogy, I have long seen God-talk in the Star Wars story.

In this book I found that McDowell does a good job of exploring theological themes (most doing with the nature of evil and the nature of power) in the original trilogy and the prequels. One place I would have enjoyed more discussion was how did the politics of the day shape the movies themselves. Lucas has spoken at great length about how that helped shape the first movie but where did that impact the later movies? McDowell does this to a degree but I would want to look at it some more (admittedly Lucas had the broad strokes of the story in mind well before the movies came out so it is a challenging line to draw).

I appreciated the depth to which McDowell takes the look. There are some interesting ways to look at the movies many have said are pure escapism.